Deepa Ranganathan/Sacramento Bee pro-illegal immigration propaganda

This Sacramento Bee article really made me start to think about my position on illegal immigration. I'm a strong opponent of general amnesty and extending government services to illegal aliens... That being said, when I read this article, I really felt for the two students whose stories appear in the article...

I am currently swearing on a stack of Bibles that I did not look at the article before leaving this comment:

Without reading the article, I'm going to bet it starts with a sentence like, "Esmeralda is a high school honors student with a keen interest in becoming a lawyer." Then, we're informed that she's "undocumented".

Then, like a golden ray of bat pee, the solution shines forth: the DREAM Act or similar.

Please bear this in mind: every discounted college education given to an illegal alien is one less given to a U.S. citizen. A discount is taken from a U.S. citizen and given to a citizen of another country. As a side effect, that lowers the worth of U.S. citizenship.

If you care about "Esmeralda" or whatever the poster child they feature in such propaganda, start a private fund.

Only after leaving that did I look at the article, and... I was right! According to "reporter" Deepa Ranganathan:

Beto's rage is nearly palpable.

The 22-year-old once dreamed of becoming a firefighter or a police officer. He wanted an assignment in a tough neighborhood, like the block in south Sacramento where he grew up.

Beto's family smuggled him over the Mexican border illegally when he was 5...

It is formula evocation of sympathy for freedom for aggression, like the old tearjerker movies. One was called "They made me a criminal". Another had some female criminals who loved kittens. It appeals to weakness and nurturing impulses, while making law and insistence on freedom from aggression sound outrageously harsh. This is not a nation of women, though, we have millions in prison, and have permanently deported many hundreds of thousands out of those prisons, in the last ten years.